From the Mind of JScott

Last week I had the opportunity of a lifetime to attend my first ever After Dark Education  (which I will be referring to as AD the rest of the story) in Kansas City, a quick 5 hour drive from my place. As its website says it's an "experience" as it's "neither a 'conference' nor a 'workshop'; it's the best of BOTH worlds." I had always heard other photographers talk about AD but only knew that it was this mystical sounding thing with superpowers where they kept you up late and forced you to cram in as much learning in as short amount of time as possible. Well, my thoughts were proven correct--except for the superpowers. Flat out, this thing ROCKED! For 72 hours I crammed in as much learning as possible. Topics ranged from ways to market yourself to lighting a high school senior to creating composite images (aka collages with a 21st century feel) to ways to maximize your sales. I was surrounded by some of the best photogr...

So I realized this morning that I never blogged about Alive and Running 2012 and just had to share some thoughts... Runners prepare for the start of this year's run for suicide awareness and prevention. I have never been directly affected by suicide and honestly I hope that I never am as long as I'm around. But to many suicide is real. It happened to someone very close to them. It's not just something on the news or in TV shows or a movie. Shock. Sadness. Anger. Despair. Depression. Bargaining. How does one ever move to acceptance? Can they? Should they? Two family members embrace during the day of the 2012 race. I'm no psychologist. I'm a photographer. I capture images for a living. So when I was approached by a friend to photograph a 5K that was created for those dealing with the effects of suicide I thought, "Alright, it's just a race. I'll take some action shots, sell some, it'll be an easy job." This was hardly "...